Christian Teacher in Berlin Forced to Remove Cross Necklace in Classroom
The administrators of a school in Berlin, Germany have ordered a Christian teacher to remove her cross necklace while teaching students inside the classroom.
The administrators based their order on the city's neutrality law that bans teachers and civil servants from wearing religious symbols and clothing in public, Fox News reported.
The policy was enacted to prevent teachers from religiously influencing their students, according to The Local, an English-language publication in Germany.
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However, Fox News quoted a Yale University statement as saying that what administrators are seeking to ban are "visible symbols of a religious affiliation."
The source clarified that under the law, "pieces of jewelry ... such as a cross on a chain, are allowed. City-run kindergartens, adult education institutions and vocational schools will also be exempted from the ruling. Religious education in public schools will also not be affected."
Jörg Antoine, the consistorial president of the Berlin-Brandenburg Protestant Church, said Berlin's neutrality law to be unconstitutional, The Local reported.
Antoine said the Berlin school should have been less strict towards the teacher who wanted to wear the cross necklace.
Berlin Bishop Markus Dröge said, "We advocate for the freedom to wear a cross."
The law has generally been applied to Muslim women who wear a hijab, or headscarf, since the legislation was passed over a decade ago, sources said.
The ban on the wearing of the Muslim headscarf has sparked controversy not only in Germany but in other European countries as well.
A German Constitutional Court ruling in 2015 deemed the headscarf ban unconstitutional—unless headscarves are found to "constitute a sufficiently specific danger of impairing the peace at school or the state's duty of neutrality."
In February, a court awarded a Muslim teacher in Berlin nearly $9,500 in compensation after the school in the case was found to have discriminated against her by denying her a position at the school just because of her headscarf.
However, just last month, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) upheld the employers' rights to ban religious symbols if there is good reason.
The court made the decision after two Muslim women in Belgium and France were fired for refusing to remove their headscarves and took their cases to court, USA Today reported.
The court gave employers the prerogative to decide whether to ban the wearing of religious, political and philosophical symbols by their employees.
